The 14 Car Performance Therapy Project Rushforths, Baers, Yokohamas, and more

[NOT A TA]

I'd prefer chrome, but thats probably not going to happen since the new ones I have are black and chroming them would be expensive.. Black pipes will make the car look like it's higher off the ground so I probably won't leave them black. It's an optical illusion. Those who were around in the 70's may remember the flat black rocker panel trend, I did it to my 68 Camaro and it instantly looked like it was higher off the ground. As you can see in the pic in my first post my car is not really very low at all as it is compared with the current drop & tuck trend in the PT community. I've even been told I have too much "gap" above the tire. I care more about performance and it seems fine as is on track and at the same time the sidepipes make it appear lower than it actually is because the bottom of them is lower than the rockers. The effect is noticable more in person than in pics so I'm thinking about painting them.

Because I care more about performance I'm giving up the chrome pipes even though I really like the look of them. As you can see below the front section is just a faux header with only one of the tubes flowing exhaust. When I originally installed them I had the stock 350 2V engine with a single stock exhaust system. So upgrading to actual "dual" exhaust was a big step up ! AHAHAHA Even using stock exhaust manifolds! Since then I installed a bigger engine which is limited by the exhaust and the small (575 CFM) carb I've been using with the chrome setup. Car runs great and drivability is good. Throttle response is great but I'm leaving a lot of available power unused because the engine is kind of corked up.

The chrome pipes are great for an around town cruise night car and I've run high 13's at the strip and up to 140 MPH on road courses and at land speed races, so for what I was doing before they were fine. Now that I've got all the safety equipment in place to run up near 200 MPH I'll be building for more power eventually and the new full headers will be necessary. You just can't easily push enough air through stock Pontiac D port exhaust manifolds to make 600-700 HP.

So anyway, here's my old setup. The front and rear sidepipe sections were NOS pieces when I installed them but were from 2 different sets. They were different diameters. I had aluminum spacer collars made close to size by a bud in a machine shop then hand sanded them to an interference fit. I had a local exhaust shop bend up the sections that run from the faux header sections to the stock exhaust manifolds. I fabricated some T shaped mounting brackets that get bolted to the pinch weld at the bottom of the rockers. I used sway bar end link bushings to mount the pipes to the brackets so the engine movement and flex of the car over uneven roads etc. wouldn't crack the pipes.

I'll have to determine a good way to mount the new ones which are longer and heavier. I may try the same style brackets to the pinchweld.